The king had heard this about Tirhakah king of Cush: “Look, he has set out to fight against you.” So he again sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying,

And, when Hezekiah had received the letter at the hand of the messengers, and had read it, then went he up to the house of Yahweh, and Hezekiah spread it out before Yahweh.

‘Therefore their inhabitants were powerless,
They were shattered [in spirit] and put to shame;
They were like plants of the field, the green herb,
As grass on the housetops is scorched before it is grown up.

Isaiah had not gone out from the middle of the city when the word of Yahweh came to him, saying,

Hezekiah had said to Isaiah, "What is the confirming sign that the Lord will heal me and that I will go up to the Lord's temple the day after tomorrow?"

Isaiah the prophet called to Yahweh, and he brought back the shadow on the steps where it had gone down on the steps of Ahaz, backwards ten steps.

At that time, Berodak-Baladan the son of Baladan king of {Babylon} sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah, for he had heard that Hezekiah had been ill.

At this, Hezekiah replied to Isaiah, "What you've spoken from the LORD is good," because he had been thinking, "Why not, as long as there's peace and security in my lifetime"?"

He did evil in the eyes of Yahweh, according to the detestable things of the nations that Yahweh had driven out from the presence of the {Israelites}.

He returned and rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed. He erected altars for Baal and made a pole of Asherah worship just as Ahab king of Israel had made, and he bowed down to all of the host of heaven and served them.

He built altars in the temple of Yahweh [about] which Yahweh had said, "I will put my name in Jerusalem."

He made his son to pass through the fire, and practiced sorcery, and used enchantments, and dealt with those who had familiar spirits, and with wizards: he worked much evil in the sight of Yahweh, to provoke him to anger.

He put the image of the Asherah that he had made in the temple which Yahweh had said to David and to Solomon his son, "In this temple and in Jerusalem which I have chosen from all of the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever.

But they would not hearken, and Manasseh led them astray to do more evil than the nations that Jehovah had destroyed from before the children of Israel.

“Since Manasseh king of Judah has committed all these detestable things—greater evil than the Amorites who preceded him had done—and by means of his idols has also caused Judah to sin,

And Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem with it from one end to another; beside his sin with which he made Judah to sin, in doing evil in the sight of Jehovah.

He did evil in the eyes of Yahweh as Manasseh his father had done.

He walked in all of the way which his father had walked, and he served the idols which his father had served and bowed down to them.

But the people of the land smote all them that had conspired against king Amon; and the people of the land made Josiah his son king in his stead.

He practiced what the LORD considered to be right, living the way his ancestor David had lived, turning neither to the right nor to the left.

Eighteen years after King Josiah had begun to reign, the king sent Azaliah's son Shaphan, grandson of Meshullam the scribe, to the LORD's Temple. He told him,

Then, after reading it, Shaphan the scribe went in to the king and gave him an account of what had been done, saying, Your servants have given out the money which was in the house, and have given it to the overseers of the work of the house of the Lord.

It happened, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he tore his clothes.

So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam and Achbor and Shaphan and Asaiah, went to Huldah the woman prophet, the wife of Shallum, the son of Tikvah, the son of Harhas, keeper of the robes, (now she was living in Jerusalem, in the second part of the town;) and they had talk with her.

because your heart was sensitive, and you humbled yourself in the LORD's presence when you heard what I had to say against this place and against its inhabitants that they would become a desolation and a curse and you have torn your clothes and cried out before me, be assured that I have truly heard you,' declares the LORD.

Then the king went up [to] the temple of Yahweh, and all of the men of Judah and all of the inhabitants of Jerusalem [were] with him, [including] the priests, the prophets, and all of the people from smallest to greatest; and in their {hearing} he read all of the words of the scroll of the covenant that had been found in the temple of Yahweh.

And the king commanded Hilkijah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the doorkeepers, to bring forth out of the temple of Jehovah all the vessels that had been made for Baal, and for the Asherah, and for all the host of the heavens; and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them to Bethel.

He removed the priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained [to] burn incense on the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem and who offered incense to, to the sun, to the moon, to the constellations, and to all the host of heaven.

Josiah brought out the Asherah from the house of the Lord to the Brook Kidron outside Jerusalem, and burned it there, and ground it to dust, and threw its dust on the graves of the common people [who had sacrificed to it].

He also demolished the temples of the cultic male prostitutes that had been operating in the LORD's Temple, where the women had been doing weaving for the Asherah.

And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba even to Beer-sheba; and he broke down the high places of the gates, those at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, and those on the left hand of any going in at the gate of the city.

He kept the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun from coming to the temple of Yawheh at the side room of Nathan-Melech the eunuch, which [was] in the court; and the chariots of the sun he burned with fire.

The altars which [were] on the roof of the upper room of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courtyards of the temple of Yahweh, the king tore down and ran from there and threw their ashes into the Wadi Kidron.

The high places which [were] east of Jerusalem, which [were] on the south of the Mountain of Destruction which Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians and for Chemosh the abomination of Moab and for Molech the detestable thing of the {Ammonites}, the king defiled.

The stone pillars were broken to bits and the wood pillars cut down, and the places where they had been were made full of the bones of the dead

Moreover, the altar which [was] in Bethel, the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin, had built, even that altar and the high place, [Josiah] tore down. Then he burned down the high place and crushed [the] pole of Asherah worship to dust and burned it with fire.

When Josiah turned and saw the tombs which [were] there on the hill, he sent and took the bones from the tombs and burned [them] on the altar. [Thus] he defiled them according to the word of Yahweh that the man of God had proclaimed who had proclaimed these things.

So Josiah said, "Let him rest and let no man move his bones." So they left his bones undisturbed with the bones of the prophet who had come from Samaria.

Moreover, all of the shrines of the high places which [were] in the towns of Samaria which the kings of Israel had made to provoke [Yahweh], Josiah removed, and he did to them like all of the deeds he had done in Bethel

After he had slaughtered all the priests who served at the high places and burned their bones on those high places, he returned to Jerusalem.

For they had not kept this Passover from the days of the judges who had judged over Israel {or} [during] the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.

Moreover, the mediums and the spiritists, the household gods and the idols, and all of the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, Josiah removed in order to establish the words of the law written on the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had found [in] the temple of Yahweh.

And before him there had been no king like him that turned to Jehovah with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there his like.

However, Yahweh did not turn from the fierceness of his great anger which was kindled against Judah because of all of the provocations [with] which Manasseh had provoked him.

Yahweh had said, "Even Judah I will remove from my face, as I have removed Israel; I will reject this city that I have chosen, even Jerusalem and the house [of] which I said, 'My name shall be there'!"

In his days Pharaoh-Nechoh king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates; and king Josiah went against him; but Nechoh slew him at Megiddo, when he had seen him.

He did evil in the eyes of Yahweh according to all his ancestors had done.

And Pharaoh-Nechoh had him bound at Riblah in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem; and laid a tribute upon the land of a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.

Jehoiakim paid Pharaoh the required amount of silver and gold, but to meet Pharaoh's demands Jehoiakim had to tax the land. He collected an assessed amount from each man among the people of the land in order to pay Pharaoh Necho.

He did evil in the eyes of Yahweh according to all that his ancestors had done.

In his days, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up [because] Jehoiakim had become his servant [for] three years; then he turned and rebelled against him.

So Yahweh sent against him raiding bands of Chaldeans, raiding bands of Aram, raiding bands of Moab, and raiding bands of the {Ammonites}. He had sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of Yahweh that he had spoken by the hand of his servants the prophets.

Surely, it was {on the command} of Yahweh against Judah to remove them from his sight because of the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he had done.

Also, [for] the blood of the innocent that he had shed--and he filled Jerusalem [with] innocent blood--Yahweh was not willing to forgive.

The king of Egypt did not again come out from his land, for the king of Babylon had taken [territory] from the Wadi of Egypt to the Euphrates River.

He did evil in the eyes of Yahweh according to all that his father had done.

Then he took from there all of the treasures of the temple of Yahweh and the treasures of the palace of the king. He cut up all of the vessels of gold which Solomon the king of Israel had made in the temple of Yahweh, as Yahweh had foretold.

He did evil in the eyes of Yahweh [just] like all that Jehoiakim had done.

For, because the anger of Jehovah was against Jerusalem and against Judah, until he had cast them out from his presence, Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon.

By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine in the city was so severe the residents had no food.

The city was breached, and the entire army left during the night through the gate that stood between the two walls beside the royal garden, even though the Chaldeans had surrounded the city. They escaped through the Arabah,

And when they had taken him, they brought him to Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon to Riblah, where they reasoned with him.

Zedekiah's sons were executed while Zedekiah was forced to watch. The king of Babylon then had Zedekiah's eyes put out, bound him in bronze chains, and carried him off to Babylon.

And he had the house of the Lord and the king's house and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great house, burned with fire;

The remainder of the people left in the city, the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, and the remainder of the multitude, Nebuzaradan the commander of the imperial guard deported.

The captain of the guard also confiscated the fire pans, basins, and whatever had been crafted of pure gold and pure silver.

The two pillars, the one sea, and the water cart which Solomon had made for the temple of Yahweh, there was no weighing to the bronze of all of these vessels.

The height of the one pillar was eighteen cubits, and a capital of brass was on it; and the height of the capital was three cubits, with network and pomegranates on the capital around it, all of brass: and like to these had the second pillar with network.

And out of the city he took an officer that was in charge over the men of war, and five men of them that had been in the king's presence, who were found in the city, and the principal scribe of the army, who mustered the people of the land, and threescore men of the people of the land that were found in the city:

And as for the people that remained in the land of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had left behind, over them he appointed Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan.

When all of the commanders of the troops heard, they and the men, that the king of Babylon had appointed Gedaliah, they came to Gedaliah at Mizpah, [even] Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, Johanan the son of Kareah, Seriah the son of Tanhumeth the Netophathite, Jaazaniah the son of the Maacathite, they and their men.

Later on, after King Jehoiachin of Judah had been in exile for 37 years, on the twenty-seventh day of the twelfth month, during the first year of his reign, King Evil-merodach of Babylon released King Jehoiachin of Judah from prison.

Jehoiachin changed out of his prison clothes and had regular meals in the king's presence every day for the rest of his life,